Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

So, firstly, this:

> For the sake of the experiment, let's assume the sci-fi writers are right, and eating animals will eventually be considered immoral.

Also, is it vegetarianism if you only eat lab-grown meat? It's still meat, right, so you're still not vegetarian. Or is it the "not eating animals" that makes you a vegetarian now?

I tend to think that (e.g.) Iain M Banks is right, and that eventually eating animals will be considered immoral (and not the same as vegetarianism). You may disagree, and that's fine - everyone has an opinion.

The interesting question is not whether the future will consider this immoral, but whether if it becomes immoral in the future that applies retroactively and makes it immoral now? Does morality change over time, or regardless of time?

I grew up in the '70's so I've seen the change in morality first-hand, but that all kinda caught us by surprise. It's going to be interesting being more aware of the change in morality around this.

> Or is it the "not eating animals" that makes you a vegetarian now?

That's the point of ethical veganism/vegetarianism, yes.

So will you still be a "ethical vegetarian" if you eat lab-grown meat?

I know people self-describing as ethical vegans who eagerly await it. It sounds like a clear "yes" to me.

Why people take SF authors seriously about the future is beyond me. It's just people wishing for things. Part of the reason I stopped reading it is that it was so apparent that people used "the future" as a synonym for "Narnia" to tell their own stories or moral fables, and yet dated themselves tremendously and guessed wrong. They were more dishonest because they tried to make plausible magic, kings, and wizards instead of just realizing what they were asking for pretty much required it.

The culture has about as much chance of coming into existence as the fact that we discover unicorns. So why should we take him seriously?

You're completely right - SF is not about the future, in the same way that Narnia is not about wardrobes. It's an allegory about current society. Not trying to predict the future, but taking current trends and seeing where they go. The point is not really about guessing right or wrong, but making commentary on our current society and getting us to consider choices we may have to make.

Banks himself said that the Culture has no chance of being created by actual humans, that people would need to change in order to create it. But as a thought experiment for "what would a technological Utopia actually look like?" I think it's a very valuable contribution. There are very few Utopias that I've read about that I would actually want to live in - the Culture is probably the most attractive of any of them.

In this respect, the advent of lab-grown meat does pose the question of whether it's morally acceptable to eat animals. As far as I'm aware, only SF authors have considered this, because that's the kind of thing they do. A technological change has triggered a moral conundrum - this is the stuff that good SF ponders. It's not necessary to get the details of the technology right, or to correctly predict it. It's enough to get us thinking about this stuff before it happens.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com